Emily Kay - Boston Golf Examiner

Golf season may have come early to New England, but players hoping for a quick 18 at Shaker Hills Golf Club in Harvard, Mass., will have to go elsewhere for now. The 18-hole, Brian Silva-designed course closed in December and if it reopens, it will be under new ownership after a foreclosure auction in April.
 
Daniel McLaughlin, who owns two courses of his own, will handle the April 12 auction for Middlesex Savings Bank, he told us on Friday. The Massachusetts-based financial institution holds the mortgage on the property, which the Boston Business Journal reported was for $2.13 million. Fresh from banging the gavel on Thursday’s sale of Amherst’s Hickory Ridge Country Club to a partner in a New Jersey golf course-management firm, McLaughlin will welcome would-be buyers of the 168-acre facility on April 12 at 11 a.m. in the clubhouse at 146 Shaker Road.

Long a favorite of golfers outside the Boston metro area, the public course that plays to 6,850 yards from the tips opened in 1991. Like many operations in New England and worldwide (see: Pleasant Valley CC, Georgetown CC, Wentworth Hills GC, Sterling National CC, et al), Shaker Hills fell victim to the sour economy. The bank issued a foreclosure notice on the property in January, and club owners owed $20,597.37 in real estate taxes to the town of Harvard for 2011 and 2012, according to Debbie Nutter, the town's treasurer and collector.
 
One of the reasons for the club’s problems was the opening of newer courses like the highly acclaimed Red Tail Golf Club in nearby Devens.
 
“Shaker probably failed to adapt to competition from newer courses like Red Tail, which is not too far away,” said a local golfer with knowledge of the business climate. “If the price differential were only a few bucks, people were going to go play Red Tail.”
 
McLaughlin, whose Daniel P. McLaughlin & Co. handled the December auction of Dartmouth’s Hawthorne Country Club as well as last June’s sale of the Ridge Club in Sandwich, expected a good deal of interest in Shaker Hills. “It’s a great course and a very nice clubhouse,” he said.
 
While no one in the golf industry enjoys seeing courses go under, McLaughlin suggested that changes in ownership did not necessarily signal the end of hackers’ favorite haunts.
 
“Some 150 members showed up to the Hickory Ridge auction and [Jay Craig, the new owner] sat them all down in the function room and talked about his plans,” said McLaughlin, who owns Shining Rock Golf Club in Northborough and Hopkinton (Mass.) Country Club. “He was definitely interested in talking to the members and plans to be a hands-on operator.”
 
The Shaker Hills auction will also involve the 13,000-square-foot clubhouse with a restaurant and bar, function rooms, kitchen, locker rooms, pro shop, and lounge area. The 5.33-acre clubhouse is actually situated in Ayer, while the course is in Harvard.